St. Avalo - Blog Posts

Pardon the dust...

It's with great pleasure we're announcing the opening of our public tasting room at the heart of Los Olivos, CA in the Santa Ynez Valley!

While the Central Coast is often overlooked as a destination, we've set our roots deep into the community over the past 15+ years and count ourselves lucky to call the Santa Ynez Valley home.

We're putting the finishing touches on what we aim to be a gathering spot for locals, a welcoming introduction to our brand for wine aficionados & a staple for all to experience while in our small town.

A look back on the prior year:

Estate reds are released! We can't be more excited to release the first vintages of our 2021 + 2022 estate harvests. Given our unique location in Central California, we experience cold colds & warm warms. A morning fog usually embraces the valley while experience summer highs that closely resemble terroirs of Italian regions—hence Italian grape varietals taking well to our vineyard.

Now that we finally have a well-rounded offering of wines, we have something for every palette & look forward to introducing you to wines from the old world; cultivated from our own estate here in the Santa Ynez Valley.

Throughout 2023 we sponsored a half-dozen events & poured our wines for many folks with great feedback. Additionally, we submitted our 3 white wines into 2 competitions, winning medals for both our 2021 Vermentino & 2021 Pinot Grigio.

With such a warm reception to market, we decided the timing was right to open doors to the public—and what spot better than downtown Los Olivos?

So what is next?

We plan a soft launch of the tasting room later this month as we put on some finishing touches, and welcome you all to come by! As we're still aging some of our more mature wines, we have plenty more in store for you but we're quite pleased with the feedback we've received thus far.

For those of you living further than a hop, skip & a jump away, please join us in celebration by having our wines shipped to your doorstep. For those of you who are not yet Wine Club members, be sure you use our new year's promo code: "ECCO" (active through Valentine's Day 😉) & remember—shipping is on the house with orders of 6 or more bottles.

Stay tuned for our grand opening & all the fun we have in store for 2024...

St. Avalo Wines win Peninsula Underground competition.

Being a boutique wine producer, you'll not find St. Avalo wines at supermarkets or restaurant chains. We take pride in personally visiting restaurants + bottle shops to develop relationships & ensure we're a mutually sound fit for our partners. When you're as passionate as we are about delivering on quality, it's critical to find those who share our values.

Our core focus when approaching our market is centered around partnering with those who share our appreciation for quality like our friends at Cuyama Buckhorn & many others. And the same goes for market feedback...

We recently had a chance to meet the Peninsula Underground folks & appreciated what they were doing with the boutique wine producer community in California. We entered the first 3 of our estate wines to be bottled in their 2023 California Underground competition—and were surprised to have won "Best in Class" on our 2021 Pinot Grigio & 2021 Vermentino.

"This wine is your summer go-to. It's bright, fresh, and just downright delicious. Lemon, pear, and honeysuckle, with a hint of apricot, followed by great salinity and mouth feel on the finish. Medium plus acid gives the wine structure and we detect tertiary notes of dried apple and nuttiness. A treat by the pool." - Peninsula Underground

Having already had great feedback on the Pinot Grigio, we were pleased to read this review & happy to win "Best in Class." For our Vermentino also being well-reviewed to date, we were happy to hear their thoughts & also win "Best in Class."

"Vermentino is a dry white wine grown mainly in Sardinia and Tuscany that has medium plus acid, medium minus body, and displays green apple, citrus, and floral notes. This top expression from St. Avalo transports their drinkers to Italy with a California twist. The nose is floral, with white blossom, then leads to green apple, pear, sweet grapefruit, lemon, and even a hint of nectarine building toward tropical notes. The wine is bright and fresh. There was is great salinity and mouthfeel and shows almond on the long finish. Floral and zesty. Delicious and Refreshing. A pleasure to drink." - Peninsula Underground

Outside of placing our wines in restaurants & bottle shops, we offer our wines to consumers directly from our website and rely on industry experts, publications & peer reviews to educate consumers on our wines. Make sure to follow St. Avalo on social media & subscribe to our newsletter for the latest announcements & releases.

As far as passion projects go, making the multi-year investment in cultivating an organic vineyard takes plenty of patience. Like so many other things in life, making quality wine can easily go awry; but receiving the market feedback we have makes it all worth it.

Newsletter - July 1, 2023

The full St. Avalo newsletter from July 1, 2023, can be found here.

Peninsula Underground awards St. Avalo “Best in Class” 2023.

Since 2013 Peninsula Underground has strived to help their community find great wines of great value. We recently met the folks at Peninsula Underground & appreciated what they were doing with the boutique wine producer's community in California.  We chose to enter the first of our 3 estate wines in their “2023 Under the Radar CA” competition—and were surprised to have won “Best in Class” on two of our wines!

 

Newsletter June 3, 2023

Hello Friends, Family, Wine Aficionados & Everybody else who shares Bacchus’ affinity for grape.

Welcome to the St. Avalo newsletter—where our aim is to keep you abreast of the latest on quality wine & quality times.  We wouldn’t be here without you & we’re beyond excited that you’re here.

St. Avalo is based on a love story & love is what keeps us making wine.  We’re excited to share that we’ve gone live online & we’re inviting you all to grab a taste of the Santa Ynez Valley—straight to your door.

The first of our organic estate wines were bottled 1 year ago, and we’re now opening our cellars up to non-wine club members.  We hope you have a chance to #TasteTheValley as we can offer wines that rival what you have tasted from Liguria, Sardegna & Toscana.

In celebratory spirit & anticipation for our 2023 bottling, we’d like to extend 10% OFF and FREE shipping with PROMO CODE: THOR.  Make your wine selections from our website & be sure to keep in touch with us on your favorite social channel.

Best,

The Saint

 

Where has all the wi—time gone?

It's wild to think that it has been almost eight years since we set out on this journey of growing & producing our own organic estate wines. Embracing #organicfarming principles was an obvious choice—not only for our vineyard but for the generations to come. Building a #sustainable supply chain is another core focus of ours as we source glass, cork & barrels among other things. What quickly became apparent to us after embarking on this winding journey, was the importance of the role #community has at every step of the way.

In a crowded & commoditized market, one of the only ways we can differentiate St. Avalo Wines is through all the friends we've made along the way & our continued investment in our community. Earlier this month we had the chance to pour our wines for 2,000+ endurance runners alongside their friends/family at the #SBWineHalfMarathon2023 in Solvang.

The St. Avalo team pours wines following the SB Wine Half Marathon in Solvang, CA.

Next month we're continuing our year-over-year support of the Santa Maria Elks & Old Santa Ynez Days rodeos, and hope to see some familiar faces there.

What tastes like a damn good glass of wine to some; tastes to us like years of hard work beginning to pay off & the fond memories with friends we've made along the way...If you haven't yet had a chance to try our wines, be sure to drop by our website & order a taste of the Santa Ynez Valley delivered directly to your doorstep.

Newsletter March 6, 2023

As many of you know, last Spring we bottled the first of our estate wines from the 2021 harvest.  After letting the wines cure from bottle shock, we did our best to share our wines with all of our Friends+Family around the world & were very pleased with all the warm feedback we had!  Being the curious ones we are, we sought out an expert opinion last September to taste our wines & give us some professional feedback.

If you’ve followed St. Avalo for some time, you’ll likely have already tried our 2021 Vermentino.  A somewhat lesser-known Italian grape that is indigenous to Sardinia, we surprisingly have a similar climate & terroir here in the Santa Ynez Valley to the Italian island.  Coming in as our top-rated wine of 2021 was our Vermentino with a score of 89!  Here is what WineEnthusiast had to say:

“Crisp apple, lemon blossom and lime peel aromas make for a zesty nose on this bottling of a promising grape for the region. There’s pear-like ripeness to the palate, which shows a light textural edge.” - Matt Kettmann

This feedback is warmly welcomed & we couldn’t ask for much more from our inaugural harvest & bottling.  

To share in our excitement over this news, we’re extending a promotion to all of the St. Avalo family to order a few bottles for your home cellar.  Use promo code “WE20" for 20% OFF your next order & FREE shipping when you order 3 or more bottles of St. Avalo on our online store!

Until next time,

-St. Avalo